Colleagues, peers voice support for Yellen as Fed chair The U.S. Senate confirmed Janet Yellen, a professor emerita at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, as the first female head of the Federal Reserve on Monday. Yellen, current vice chair of the Fed’s Board of Governors, will replace Ben Bernanke when she takes office on Feb. 1. She was nominated to the position by President Barack Obama in October. Yellen taught macroeconomics and international business to undergraduates and MBA students at Haas for 24 years beginning in 1980, becoming the second woman to earn tenure at the Haas School in 1982. She received the school’s Earl F. Cheit Award for Excellence in Teaching, a student-nominated award, in 1985 and 1988. “Janet was always a phenomenal teacher — partly because she worked very, very hard at it,” said Haas professor David Levine, whom Yellen mentored, in an August interview with The Daily Californian. “She thought about literally every word she would say. As she has moved up in government, this level of thoughtfulness and reflection has always been increasingly important — and as a high official of the Federal Reserve system, where literally, the placement of a comma can move the markets.” Yellen joined the Clinton administration in the 1990s as chair of the Council of Economic Advisers and served as president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco from 2004 to 2010. Yellen earned a reputation as a strong advocate for the Fed’s aggressive debt-purchasing program that intended to stimulate the economy and reduce uncomfortably high unemployment levels, a policy that has come to concern some inflation-wary Senate Republicans. But nearly a dozen Senate Republicans crossed the aisle to confirm Yellen, the first Democratic nominee since Paul Volcker was appointed chair in 1979. The 52-26 final tally was the closest confirmation vote for any Fed chair in history. Connor Grubaugh covers higher education. Contact him atcgrubaugh@dailycal.organd follow him on Twitter@ConnorGrubaugh.

Amenper: I was going to discharge my emotions with one of my E Mails, about the Chris Christie´s incident.

But this editorial of the Wall Street Journal today will give you a better and professional outlook of the situation as a whole, including the double standard of the administration in similar or more important cases.

Now that we have your attention, allow us to explain. Governor Chris Christie apologized to New Jersey on Thursday for aides who closed traffic lanes in order to punish a Democratic mayor, and he fired a deputy chief of staff. We mention the IRS because Mr. Christie’s contrition contrasts so sharply with President Obama’s handling of the tax agency’s abuse of political opponents and his reluctance to fire anyone other than a military general for anything.

In his long press conference in Trenton, Mr. Christie was properly contrite, saying he had been “lied to” by the senior aide he proceeded to fire. He also said he is withdrawing his support for his former campaign manager to run the state Republican Party because the man had shown “callous and indifferent” behavior toward the people inconvenienced by the traffic-lane closures. If Mr. Christie really didn’t know about this cheap exercise in political payback, and nothing new emerges, the incident shouldn’t interfere with the Governor’s expected presidential run.

That doesn’t mean Mr. Christie shouldn’t learn from the experience. One lesson is that he’s going to have to upgrade the quality of his advisers as he moves onto the national scene. The traffic-lane-as-vendetta ploy is so dumb and petty that anyone who would attempt it isn’t ready for prime time. Never mind putting it in email.

Mitt Romney was supposed to be a crack manager, but he surrounded himself with campaign lightweights and he suffered for it. One of Mr. Christie’s selling points for the White House will be that he is an executive who has run a sizable state, so the media will descend on Trenton even more than it did on Wasilla, Alaska, for Sarah Palin. Better to clean out the hack loyalists now.

Which brings us to the Obama Administration, which quickly leaked to the media that the U.S. Attorney is investigating the lane closures as a criminal matter. Well, that sure was fast, and nice of Eric Holder‘s Justice Department to show its typical discretion when investigating political opponents.

This is the same Administration that won’t tell Congress what resources it is devoting to the IRS probe, and appears to be slow-rolling it. It has also doubled down by expanding the political vetting of 501(c)(4) groups seeking tax-exempt status. Lois Lerner, who ran the IRS tax-exempt shop and took the Fifth before Congress, was allowed to “retire,” presumably with a pension. Acting IRS commissioner Steven Miller resigned under pressure but no other heads have rolled. Yet compared to using the IRS against political opponents during an election campaign, closing traffic lanes for four days is jaywalking.

We raise this mostly because our media friends have been complicit in dismissing the IRS abuses, and for that matter every other legal abuse during the Obama years. The exception is the Edward Snowden theft of National Security Agency documents, which so far have exposed not a single example of law-breaking.

Not that this should make Mr. Christie or any other potential GOP candidate complacent. Republicans operate under a double media standard that holds them to a much lower scandal threshold. In that sense the pathetic New Jersey traffic-lane scandal may be, as Mr. Obama likes to say, a teachable moment.

What is Required for New Registration (Section 97.053, Fla. Stat.) You must complete the following fields for a new registration: • Your name. • Your legal residence address. • Your date of birth. • Your valid Florida driver license number or Florida identification card number. If you have not been issued either of these numbers, provide the last four digits of your Social Security number. If you have not been issued that number either, then you must indicate “none” in the field asking for this information.

• An affirmation or a mark in the check box affirming that you are a citizen of the United States of America.

• An affirmation or a mark in the check box affirming that you have not been convicted of a felony or that, if convicted, you have had your civil rights restored.

• An affirmation or a mark in the check box affirming that you have not been adjudicated mentally incapacitated with respect to voting or that, if adjudicated, you have had your right to vote restored.

• Your signature. By signing or marking the registration application, you swear or affirm under penalty of false oath that the information contained in the registration application is true. (A power of attorney is not accepted. No one other than the voter may sign or mark his or her own voter registration application.)

Note: A party affiliation is not required for a new registration. However, if you do not designate a political party affiliation, you will be registered without party affiliation (i.e., no party affiliation (NPA

First-Time Voters Who Register by Mail (Section 97.0535, Fla. Stat.)

If you register by mail, are a first-time voter in the State and have not been issued a Florida driver license number, Florida identification number, or a Social Security number, special identification requirements apply. You must provide one of the following forms of identification in order to register:

I’m a 54 year old consulting engineer and make between $60,000 and $125,000 per year, depending on how hard I work and whether or not there are work projects out there for me.

My girlfriend is 61 and makes about $18,000 per year, working as a part-time mail clerk.

For me, making $60,000 a year, under ObamaCare, the cheapest, lowest grade policy I can buy, which also happens to impose a $5,000 deductible, costs

$482 per month.

For my girlfriend, the same exact policy, same deductible, costs $1 per month. That’s right, $1 per month. I’m not making this up.

Don’t believe me? Just go to www.coveredca.gov<http://www.coveredca.gov, the ObamaCare website for California and enter the parameters I’ve mentioned above and see for yourself. By the way, my zip code is 93940. You’ll need to enter that.

So OK, clearly ObamaCare is a scheme that involves putting the cost burden of healthcare onto the middle and upper-income wage earners. But there’s a lot more to it. Stick with me.

And before I make my next points, I’d like you to think about something:

I live in Monterey County, in Central California. We have a large land mass but just 426,000 residents – about the population of Colorado Springs or the city of Omaha.

But we do have a large Hispanic population, including a large number of illegal aliens, and to serve this group we have Natividad Medical Center, a massive, Federally subsidized county medical complex that takes up an area about one-third the size of the Chrysler Corporation automobile assembly plant in Belvedere, Illinois (see Google Earth View). Natividad has state-of-the-art operating rooms, Computed Tomography and Magnetic Resonance Imaging, fully equipped, 24 hour emergency room, and much more. If you have no insurance, if you’ve been in a drive-by shooting or have overdosed on crack cocaine, this is where you go. And it’s essentially free, because almost everyone who ends up in the ER is uninsured.

Last year, 2,735 babies were born at Natividad. 32% of these were born to out-of-wedlock teenage mothers, 93% of which were Hispanic. Less than 20% could demonstrate proof of citizenship, and 71% listed their native language as Spanish. Of these 876 births, only 40 were covered under [any kind of] private health insurance. The taxpayers paid for the other 836. And in case you were wondering about the entire population – all 2,735 births – less than 24% involved insured coverage or even partial payment on behalf of the patient to the hospital in exchange for services. Keep this in mind as we move forward.

Now consider this:

If I want to upgrade my policy to a low-deductible premium policy, such as what I had with my last employer, my cost is $886 per month. But my girlfriend can upgrade her policy to the very same level, for just $4 per month. That’s right, $4 per month. $48 per year for a zero-deductible, premium healthcare policy – the kind of thing you get when you work at IBM (except of course, IBM employees pay an average of $170 per month out of pocket for their coverage).

I mean, it’s bad enough that I will be forced to subsidize the ObamaCare scheme in the first place. But even if I agreed with the basic scheme, which of course I do not, I would /never/ agree to subsidize premium policies. If I have to pay $482 a month for a budget policy, I sure as hell do not want the guy I’m subsidizing to get a better policy, for less that 1% of what I have to fork out each month for a low-end policy.

Why must I pay $482 per month for something the other guy gets for a dollar? And why should the other guy get to buy an $886 policy for $4 a month? Think about this: I have to pay $10,632 a year for the same thing that the other guy can get for $48. $10,000 of net income is 60 days of full time work /as an engineer/. $48 is something I could could pay for collecting aluminum cans and plastic bottles, one day a month.

Are you with me on this? Are you starting to get an idea what ObamaCare is really about?

ObamaCare is not about dealing with inequities in the healthcare system. That’s just the cover story. The real story is that it is a massive, political power grab. Do you think anyone who can insure himself with a premium policy for $4 a month will vote for anyone but the political party that provides him such a deal? ObamaCare is about enabling, subsidizing, and expanding the Left’s political power base, at taxpayer expense. Why would I vote for anyone but a Democrat if I can have babies for $4 a month? For that matter, why would I go to college or strive for a better job or income if it means I have to pay real money for healthcare coverage? Heck, why study engineering when I can be a schlub for $20K per year and buy a new F-150 with all the money I’m saving?

And think about those $4-a-month babies – think in terms of propagation models. Think of just how many babies will be born to irresponsible, under-educated mothers. Will we get a new crop of brain surgeons and particle physicists from the dollar baby club, or will we need more cops, criminal courts and prisons? One thing you can be certain of: At $4 a month, they’ll multiply, and multiply, and multiply. And not one of them will vote Republican. ObamaCare: It’s all about political power.

In reference to Governor Chris Christie and the recent traffic jam scandal. I WAS NOT a big supporter of the governor. But I give him high marks now. He has handled the scandal decidedly with the actions that he has taken. I cannot help think and compare him to President Obama and his administration’s scandal. Specially two scandals come to mind. The first is Benghazi, the second is the IRS scandal. The President did not even fire anyone or truly investigated and reported to the American people. In the IRS scandal the IRS Director resigned and went to retire with not even a public reprimand. Other high administrators in the IRS scandal refused to testify to a congressional committee and are still at work or retired.

I can trust Governor Chris Christie and take him at his word for now . Even more, I am beginning to like him. In the case of President Obama is the total opposite. Now I cannot trust President Obama with anything he says or does. His lying history during multiple scandals and his action are clear proof of who he is.

The State Department review of the Benghazi terror attack let senior officials off the hook for the policy decisions that led to sub-standard security at the U.S. compound in eastern Libya, according to a draft House committee report obtained by Fox News.

The nearly 100-page report concludes that the State Department’s internal review board — called the Accountability Review Board, or ARB — was flawed. The report by Republicans on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee alleges the board’s probe was not comprehensive, its interviews were not thorough, and the investigation itself may have been damaged by conflicts of interest.

A central finding is that the department, as a result of the board’s findings, meted out discipline to four mid-level officials (who were later re-instated anyway), but the board glossed over the actions and decisions of senior-level officials. The report claims the internal review identified many of the security problems with the Benghazi compound, while ignoring who was behind the policy decisions that led to them.

Specifically, the report points to the authorization by Under Secretary for Management Patrick Kennedy to continue operating the ad hoc compound in Benghazi. The interim report found that a December 2011 action memo, prepared by Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Jeffrey Feltman and signed off on by Kennedy, green-lighted the operation. Witnesses told Republican investigators that this decision to run the operation on an ad hoc basis was largely responsible for the inadequate security presence on the ground in Benghazi, not money.

The report also noted that it’s unclear which other senior leaders were involved in this decision but said it is likely, based on email evidence, that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s views played a role in the decision-making.

None of the four State Department employees who were disciplined after the ARB was released in December, and later re-instated by Secretary of State John Kerry in August, were responsible for making policy. The draft states that the use of administrative leave was meant to leave the impression of accountability.

The draft interim report, which was produced by the Republican majority, states clearly that Clinton wanted to extend the Benghazi operation. It reported that several officials within the Near Eastern Affairs office recalled Clinton’s desire to leave the operation in place once the primary diplomatic facility in Tripoli was re-opened.

In the summer of 2012, as security conditions unraveled, with documented attacks on western facilities, a State Department officer who served on the Libya desk said Kennedy was asked about the mission’s future, and Kennedy said he would first have to check with Clinton. Based on a conversation between Ambassador Chris Stevens – who was later killed in the attack — and Clinton, Stevens’ deputy Greg Hicks testified it was the former secretary of State’s personal goal to have a permanent operation in Benghazi.

State Department Assistant Secretary of State Douglas Frantz said Sunday that the ARB’s and State Department’s response to Benghazi has been “thorough and transparent.”

“In fact, it set a new standard for transparency measured by tens of thousands of pages of documents turned over to Congress, testimony in public and closed hearings and a declassified report for the public,” he said. “To suggest anything has been hidden or that accountability has been averted requires willful ignorance of these facts.”

“Twisting the facts to advance a political agenda does a disservice to those who lost their lives and those who have devoted the past year to understanding what happened and implementing security procedures to make certain it does not happen again,” Frantz added. “The ARB report did not find that any individual willfully ignored his or her responsibilities or engaged in misconduct; it did not find that anyone breached his or her duty so as to be subject to termination or other discipline. It did, however, identify leadership deficiencies on the part of four employees”

Rep. Elijah Cummings, the committee’s top Democrat, in a written statement called the report’s claims “unsubstantiated accusations.”

“This Republican report is not an official Committee report, but rather a completely partisan staff report that the Chairman apparently did not want Committee Members to see before he leaked it to the press. Rather than focusing on the reforms recommended by the ARB, Republicans have politicized the investigation by engaging in a systematic effort to launch unsubstantiated accusations against the Pentagon, the State Department, the President, and now the ARB itself,” he said.

But the draft report said that there were other problems with the internal review.

As one example, the co-chairman of the ARB Ambassador Thomas Pickering told investigators that his team had the authority to conduct depositions, and the authority to issue subpoenas. But the Board never used these authorities, instead relying heavily on group and individual interviews.

While the ARB placed blamed on the State Department Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs for “systemic leadership and management deficiencies,” the NEA’s second in command was only interviewed once, in a group setting. Adm. Mike Mullen, the other co-chairman of the ARB, was asked by congressional investigators why the second in command was not more thoroughly questioned, and according to the draft, Mullen said the official did not seem to bear significant responsibility.

The draft interim report also concluded that the State Department’s unwillingness to provide the working documents from the ARB made an independent assessment by the congressional committee difficult. Rather than record or transcribe interviews, the ARB relied on summaries. Mullen said he found the summaries to be accurate.

Mullen subsequently described, however, an example of how a culture of collegiality could undermine the ARB’s independence. Mullen put Cheryl Mills on notice that Deputy Assistant Secretary for International ProgramsCharlene Lamb’s interview with the Board could be “difficult” for the State Department.

(On Sep. 18, the Republican staff issued a clarification to its report that Mullen put Cheryl Mills on notice, saying that Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Programs Charlene Lamb’s interview could be difficult, not Ms. Mills’ questioning.)

The interim report states that members of the House oversight committee, led by Republican Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., will sharpen its focus on the senior State Department officials who drove the policy decisions in Benghazi.

The failure to affix blame above the assistant secretary level could impact future decisions on “expeditionary diplomacy” where diplomats are now operating in areas they would have pulled out of a decade ago. Critics have accused the Obama administration of favoring a light footprint which does not reflect the security conditions on the ground.

The draft interim findings will be released early next week. The House oversight committee has hearings scheduled for Sept. 19.

Fox News’ James Rosen contributed to this report

FH: State Dept. officials resign following Benghazi report

A new report on the attack that destroyed the American Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, says the State Dept. failed to provide proper security, but it does not blame any one person for the failures. CBS News’ Margaret Brennan reports.

Eric Boswell, the head of diplomatic security at the State Department, has resigned, following the release of a harsh report detailing State Department missteps that led to the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi.

State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland confirmed that Clinton accepted Boswell’s decision to resign, effective immediately. Sources say he will stay on as director of the Office of Foreign Missions for a short time. Charlene Lamb, the deputy assistant secretary responsible for embassy security, has also resigned, CBS News has learned.

In a statement released at 8.07 p.m. ET tonight, Nuland announced that the jobs of four, not three individuals were in question due to the findings of the ARB probe of the Benghazi attack. “The ARB identified the performance of four officials, three in the Bureau of the Diplomatic Security and one in the Bureau of Near East Asia Affairs,” the release read.

The State Department only identified Boswell and did not release the names of the three other individuals. The State Department did not characterize the terms of their departures as resignations. CBS News, ABC, NBC, the New York Times, AP and Reuters all previously reported that U.S. officials told the news organizations that three individuals resigned in the wake of the probe. The announcement from the State Department says that the individuals were instead placed on “administrative leave pending further action” and says that they were “relieved of their current duties.”

The names of all four of the individuals were excised from the unclassified report that was released to the press. The classified report included sensitive information including the names of the individuals in question. That classified version was made available in secure rooms on the Hill to members of the Senate Foreign Relations and House Foreign Affairs Committees.

The report, released today by an independent board led by retired Ambassador Thomas Pickering and former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen, did not single out any individuals for culpability. It did, however, blame failures within two bureaus at the State Department for the missteps that eventually lead to the deaths of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three additional American personnel in Libya. The two bureaus cited — Near Eastern Affairs and Diplomatic Security — were criticized for a security posture that was “grossly inadequate to deal with the attack,” and for failing to coordinate with other agencies to better secure the consulate.

Members of the House Foreign Affairs and Senate Foreign Relations Committees were briefed on the report this morning. After the briefings, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the report “is going to significantly advance the security of personnel and our country.”

A number of congressmen said today that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton should still testify before Congress on the Benghazi attack. Clinton was scheduled to testify on the Benghazi attack this Thursday in two congressional hearings. However, after falling ill and suffering from a concussion, she’s no longer scheduled to appear at the hearings. Clinton sent a letter to Congress, indicating she accepts the Benghazi report’s 29 recommendations for strengthening security at diplomatic posts and recognizes the the need to address the “systemic challenges” at the State Department.

House Foreign Affairs Chairwoman Ileana Ros-lehtinen, R-Fla., said Clinton “absolutely” still needs to testify. Rep. Jeff Duncan, R-S.C., said committee members still have many questions and that today’s closed-door briefing was just the start.

Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., said it was “imperative” for Clinton to testify before a new secretary of state is confirmed in President Obama’s second term.

“I think that is very important to her, I think it is very important for our country, and I think it is very important to really understand the inner workings of the State Department itself,” he said.

House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., said in a statement that Clinton will need to “personally address” issues he feels were not addressed entirely in the report.

“While I appreciate the board’s hard work, I am deeply concerned that the unclassified report omits important information the public has a right to know,” Issa said. “This includes details about the perpetrators of the attack in Libya as well as the less-than-noble reasons contributing to State Department decisions to deny security resources. Relevant details that would not harm national security have been withheld and the classified report suffers from an enormous over-classification problem.”

Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., by contrast, called the report’s conclusions “very stark, very candid, very honest.”

The report, he said, “told us the following: Mistakes were made, lives were lost, lessons need to be learned.” Durbin said the review board’s conclusions were: “Our intelligence fell short, our security personnel were inexperienced and unprepared, our security systems failed, our host nation was lacking in protection for our own people, and senior State Department officials unfortunately showed a lack of leadership and management ability.”

He added, “That is a challenge to all of us, it is a challenge for us to assess this in an honest fashion and to change policy to put resources in place that will make a difference.”

The VERY High Cost of Maintaining Michelle Obama

So here we are over five years into the presidency of Barack Hussein Obama, with record unemployment and over 46,000,000 Americans on food stamps , one would think the Obama’s would set an example for others to follow. If you thought that, you’d be very wrong. Barack Obama has more than doubled our national debt since being elected and Michelle has spent massive amounts of money on many lavish trips and vacations. When Jimmy Carter was president, even though history has proven him to be inept at his job, for all his faults, at least he was an honest man. But not so with the occupation of the Obama family in the peoples house. Even though we are (according to president Obama) in the midst of a “recession greater than that of the Great Depression,” our First Lady has spent tax-payer money on her own comfort and amusement like it’s free.

In times past, Mary Lincoln was taken to task and endured harsh criticism for purchasing china for the White House during the Civil War. Mamie Eisenhower had to shell out the salary for her personal secretary. But not so for our current First Lady; not by a long shot! She has racked-up quite a large tab since she moved in to the White House, but what the hell, she’s not paying, youare.

“In my own life, in my own small way, I have tried to give back to this country that has given me so much,” she said. “See, that’s why I left a job at a big law firm for a career in public service,” says Michelle Obama. Mrs. Obama’s license to practice law was rendered “voluntarily inactive” due to a court order in a Insurance malpractice case. Since the First Lady holds no official “public office” nor does she receive any kind of salary, I find her statement quite puzzling.

Here is a list of staff members to help the First Lady in “maintaining the dignity of her office” and their salaries:

Natalie F. Bookey Baker, executive assistant to the chief of staff to the first lady, $45,000;

Alan O. Fitts, deputy director of advance and trip director for the first lady, $61,200;

Jocelyn C. Frey, deputy assistant to the president and director of policy and projects for the first lady, $140,000;

Jennifer Goodman, deputy director of scheduling and events coordinator for the first lady, $63,240;

Deilia A.L. Jackson, deputy associate director of correspondence for the first lady, $42,000;

Kristen E. Jarvis, special assistant for scheduling and traveling aide to the first lady, $51,000;

Camille Y. Johnston, special assistant to the president and director of communications for the first lady, $102,000;

Tyler A. Lechtenberg, director of correspondence for the first lady, $50,000;

Catherine M. Lelyveld, director and press secretary to the first lady, $85,680;

Dana M. Lewis, special assistant and personal aide to the first lady, $66,000;

Trooper Sanders, deputy director of policy and projects for the first lady, $85,000;

Susan S. Sher, assistant to the president and chief of staff and counsel to the first lady, $172,200;

Frances M. Starkey, director of scheduling and advance for the first lady, $80,000;